SpaceX Reports $7.8 Billion Revenue in First Earnings as Public Company, Stock Falls on Lockup Fears

SpaceX reported a second-quarter loss of $541 million on revenue of $7.8 billion Tuesday, delivering its first earnings report as a publicly traded company and offering investors a detailed look at the rocket, satellite and artificial-intelligence provider's finances following June's record-setting initial public offering.

Revenue surged 92% from the same period a year earlier, blowing past Wall Street's expectations of roughly $6.8 billion to $6.9 billion by nearly $1 billion, according to estimates from analysts surveyed by FactSet. The company's loss also came in smaller than expected, with some estimates putting the per-share loss at roughly 9 cents, well below the 23 to 26 cents analysts had forecast.

Starlink remains the company's financial anchor

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet division continued to serve as the company's most reliable source of revenue and profit. The unit generated $4.29 billion in quarterly revenue, up 66% year-over-year, with an operating margin of 38.6%, comfortably ahead of the 35.9% margin analysts had projected. Connectivity segment operating income totaled $1.66 billion for the quarter.

SpaceX said Starlink's subscriber base has now reached 12 million, doubling from a year earlier and climbing 17% from the first quarter alone. Speaking on the earnings call, Elon Musk described how far the service has come since its early days, when connectivity was inconsistent. "Incredible uptime and low latency," Musk said, describing the current state of the service, adding that more offices and government agencies are now able to treat Starlink as a primary internet provider rather than simply a backup option.

AI business turns a corner

SpaceX's newer artificial-intelligence and computing business also showed significant momentum during the quarter, with AI revenue climbing 247% year-over-year. The segment moved from an operating loss into positive adjusted earnings for the first time, aided by a flush of new cloud-computing contracts. SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen told analysts that the company had already contracted an additional $6.7 billion in cloud services revenue in just the first few weeks of the third quarter, revenue tied to a six-month contract window that begins ramping starting in October. Johnsen said the year-end figure assumes contributions from Cursor, the AI coding platform SpaceX has increasingly folded into its computing ambitions.

Overall, Johnsen said the company remains on pace to reach $100 billion in annualized recurring revenue by the end of the year, a target that underscores just how rapidly SpaceX's business mix has shifted beyond its traditional rocket launch operations.

Spending on AI infrastructure surges

That AI push came with a dramatic increase in capital spending. Capital expenditures jumped more than sixfold from a year earlier to $18.37 billion during the quarter, with $15.83 billion of that total directed specifically toward AI infrastructure. The figure exceeded the $13.22 billion average analyst estimate compiled by FactSet, adding SpaceX to a growing list of major technology companies, following recent results from Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, whose soaring AI-related capital spending has drawn increased scrutiny from investors.

Following the June IPO, SpaceX's cash and equivalents swelled to $93.5 billion, up sharply from $24.7 billion at the end of the first quarter. At the same time, the company's debt and finance leases climbed to $36.8 billion, up from $22 billion three months earlier, reflecting the scale of borrowing accompanying its infrastructure buildout.

Stock falls despite the beat

Despite topping expectations across nearly every major financial metric, SpaceX shares fell more than 5% in after-hours trading following the report. The decline extends a rough stretch for the stock, which has dropped roughly 26% over the past month, from around $162 in early July to about $120 heading into Tuesday's earnings release, and remains nearly 50% below the intraday high of $225.64 the stock reached shortly after its June 16 trading debut.

Will Rhind, chief executive of investment firm GraniteShares, suggested the stock's decline may have had less to do with Tuesday's actual results and more to do with what's coming in the days ahead. A lockup period restricting insider stock sales is set to expire Thursday, allowing early investors and some employees who held shares before the IPO to begin selling for the first time, a development analysts have widely flagged as a likely source of additional selling pressure. An even larger tranche of roughly 900 million additional shares, a block larger than the entire IPO issuance, is set to become eligible for sale following SpaceX's third-quarter results later this year.

Rockets remain central to the business

Beyond its satellite and AI operations, SpaceX's core launch business continued to demonstrate its dominance during the quarter. The company's Falcon 9 rocket completed 165 launches in 2025 and logged another 40 Falcon-family missions in the first quarter of 2026, pushing its total past 650 orbital launches with a success rate exceeding 99%. SpaceX also recently secured a $1.6 billion Space Force contract covering 18 additional Falcon 9 launches through 2027.

Attention on the call also turned to Starship, the massive next-generation rocket NASA hopes to use to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX conducted the vehicle's 13th test flight in late July, successfully deploying 20 demonstration Starlink V3 satellites and completing a controlled splashdown of its upper stage. The company is targeting a lunar landing attempt in 2028, though no Starship vehicle has yet reached Earth orbit.

A cautiously optimistic outlook from Wall Street

Ahead of Tuesday's results, some analysts had already expressed confidence in SpaceX's ability to execute on its ambitious roadmap. Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan wrote in a July research note that the company has consistently built toward outcomes many in the industry had previously considered implausible, a track record he suggested should inform how investors weigh the company's more speculative long-term ambitions, including in-orbit data centers and eventual missions to Mars.

With Thursday's lockup expiration looming and an even larger wave of insider selling eligibility following third-quarter results later this year, investors are likely to remain focused on how much additional share supply the market can absorb, even as SpaceX's underlying financial performance continues to strengthen. For now, Tuesday's results offered the clearest evidence yet that the company's revenue growth, spanning launches, Starlink and its rapidly expanding AI business, remains firmly intact, even as the stock itself continues to grapple with the aftermath of its record-breaking but volatile public debut.